Ian Ballard

Thank you for the kind words-- I am glad you enjoyed it! I hope the technique can be useful to folks.

The Computational and Cognitive Neural Sciences lab (ballardlab.org) at UC Riverside is recruiting psychology PhD students to join our team! Check out the flyer to learn about the lab and our stellar research community at UCR. Apply by 12/1!
drive.google.com/file/d/19m8i...

🎧 New Decision & Aging Insights🎙️ episode
‪@vpmurty.bsky.social describes his research for an SRNDNA Pilot Grant and finding inspiration at a haunted house. He also talks about moving his lab across country and the impact of a single line in his presentations.
Listen now: srndna.utdallas.edu/podcast/

🧠👀 Do goals & desires shape what we see—or just what we say we see?

In our review, we outline a neurocomputational framework where motivation biases perception and action via distinct neural systems:

👉 Amygdala & LC-NE boost what we want to see.
👉 Striatal dopamine biases what we choose to report.

#RLDM2025 officially starts tomorrow! 🚀 Have you checked out our program? See details below, full program is available at rldm.org 👀

New to RLDM? Join our first-timers gathering tonight, 6-7pm, at Kennedy's Pub (30-32 Westland Row) 😊

Only ONE WEEK until #RLDM2025 ☘️ We can’t wait to welcome brilliant minds from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond for cutting-edge talks on reinforcement learning & decision making. Spaces are disappearing quickly so grab your spot before it’s gone! Register now 👉 rldm.org

@alanajaskir.bsky.social @marcelomattar.bsky.social @nicoschuck.bsky.social @actlab.bsky.social

Excited to share our upcoming workshop on neuroscience, reinforcement learning, and decision making at RLDM 2025 in Dublin, Ireland — June 11–14!

Check out the terrific speaker lineup:

🔗 sites.google.com/view/neurorl...

Co-organized with @angelaradulescu.bsky.social

@rldmdublin2025.bsky.social

📢 #RLDM2025 is nearly here – 11–14 June at Trinity College Dublin ☘️

Join researchers from AI, neuroscience, psychology & beyond to explore the latest in reinforcement learning & decision making.

🎟️ Register now to secure your spot: rldm.org #ReinforcementLearning #AI #Neuroscience #CognitiveScience

Dopaminergic processes predict temporal distortions in event memory Our memories do not simply keep time - they warp it, bending the past to fit the structure of our experiences. For example, people tend to remember items as occurring farther apart in time if they spa...

New from our lab: your brain doesn’t just remember time - it bends it.

We show that the dopamine system responds to natural breakpoints in experience, and this relates to more stretched memories of time. Blinking also increases, signaling encoding of new memories.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa) - Nature Human Behaviour In this Article, Ma et al. show, across a series of experiments, that time and memorability (the probability of recalling a visual stimulus) mutually influence one another, suggesting that time is a f...

Excited and thrilled and humbled that our work is now out at Nature Human Behaviour linking Memorability with Time Perception! I hope you all find it of interest 🙂

Memorability shapes perceived time (and vice versa)

#academicsky #neuroskyence #psychscisky #science

Big milestone for the Ballard Lab—we scanned our very first neuroimaging participant today! Grateful to be collaborating with my UCR colleagues @halledz.bsky.social and @brenthughes.bsky.social. I love the excitement of new data rolling in...

So excited to see this come out!

Thanks! Our technique is indirect (as, unlike PET, fMRI cannot directly assess dopamine), but it does seem to provide useful information linked to dopaminergic function.

Are you at CNS: hot* symposia alert featuring myself, @aaronbornstein.bsky.social, @chelseahelion.bsky.social, and @iancballard.bsky.social talking about uncertainty resolution across learning, memory, social cognition, and decision-making. See you Monday at 10:00 AM.
*I sweat a lot giving talks

Excited for my lab’s first CNS!

Catch us at:

Saturday 10:30–12:00: Datablitz Session 3 (Xinxu Shen)

Monday 10:00 AM: Symposium – Uncertainty resolution across learning, memory, and decision-making

Posters: Saturday 3:00–5:00 (A133), Monday 8:00–10:00 (D156), Tuesday 8:00–10:00 (F145)

thanks for sharing this!

Have you run your estimation on striatal subregions? I'd be very curious to see what the HRFs look like!

I’m curious to hear what you find! In the preprint, we don’t model the HRF directly, but we have a project looking into trial-by-trial variability in the NAcc HRF time-to-peak

Our TR was 2s. Would love to experiment with faster TRs in the future.

Check out our preprint to learn more about how hemodynamic latencies map regional, individual, and pathological differences linked to dopamine. We'd love to hear your questions, ideas, or feedback! @anneberry.bsky.social @blaisefrederick.bsky.social

In individuals with cocaine use disorder, we found a spatial gradient of altered hemodynamic latencies in the striatum. This pattern independently correlated with nicotine use, revealing a conserved physiological profile associated with addictive substance use. 5/n

Using PET, genetics, and pharmacology, we found that hemodynamic latency is tightly coupled to dopamine physiology. Broadly speaking, higher latency in the NAcc was associated with lower dopamine function and more perseverative behavior—linking BOLD signal timing to cognition. 4/n

Hemodynamic latencies are markedly increased in the nucleus accumbens (NAcc)—a key dopaminergic region linked to addiction. This effect is strikingly precise: the anatomical NAcc boundary (green) aligns closely with the shift in hemodynamic latency. 3/n

fMRI doesn’t directly measure dopamine, but could dopamine influence BOLD signal timing? Dopamine axons wrap around microvessels, and dopamine triggers vasoconstriction. We hypothesized that higher extracellular dopamine increases the latency of the hemodynamic response. 2/n

Temporal fMRI Dynamics Map Dopamine Physiology Spatial variations in dopamine function are linked to cognition and substance use disorders but are challenging to characterize with current methods. Because dopamine influences blood vessel dilation,...

Interested in dopamine? Have fMRI data? We’ve identified a temporal BOLD feature that carries rich information about dopamine physiology. This measure, obtainable from resting-state and task fMRI, opens new ways to indirectly probe dopamine’s role in cognition and disease. 1/n tinyurl.com/bddyz67b

Multiple brain activation patterns for the same perceptual decision-making task - Nature Communications Here, the authors show the brain uses multiple activation patterns to perform the same task. Even the default mode network, which is often inactive during focus, plays a role.

New paper alert! Have you ever looked at single-trial fMRI activation maps? If so, you know that they are super variable. Here we show that the variability is not just noise. In fact, the same task can consistently elicit different activation patterns. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Exciting news - early bird registration is now open for #RLDM2025!

🔗 Register now: forms.gle/QZS1GkZhYGRF...

Register now to save €100 on your ticket. Early bird prices are only available until 1st April.

Advancing Inclusive AI in Women’s Brain Health 🧠✨

We are thrilled to announce a $1.5M award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to support the Women’s Brain Health Initiative in advancing inclusive AI through multi-modal biomedical datasets.

task figure showing combined attention and RL task

New lab paper out now in JEP:G!

From Juliana Trach, @mdebettencourt.bsky.social , @angelaradulescu.bsky.social , and myself.

"Rewards Transiently and Automatically Enhance Sustained Attention."

t.co/r72fZRn3Nh

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